


For The First Time In Forever

by J_33



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Lost - Freeform, Natasha has emotions, Read at Your Own Risk, Steve is good with words, cap 2 spoilers, romanogers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 15:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1392301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_33/pseuds/J_33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Romanoff always felt lost, but all it took was a certain super soldier to remind her that she was worth looking for. (Set during cap 2)</p>
            </blockquote>





	For The First Time In Forever

“What a weary time those years were – to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability”  
-Charles Bukowski

She tried so hard. She fought for so long, but she was tired. It’s hard to live a life that you have no control of. They were hiding out at Sam Wilson’s house, because right now Steve and Natasha were fugitives, running from the people that they once worked with, and from the place they once belonged. 

They were dirty from the explosion, and it ended in Steve having to carry Natasha out. She trusted him with her life, but she didn’t think he felt the same way, she didn’t really trust herself, more or less with someone else’s life. But now she owed him a debt.

She was showered, her once straight red hair now wet and curly, reminding her of the way it used to be before SHIELD became the enemy. And to think all this time she was trying to clear her ledger, and wipe it clean from all the red remains, but Loki was right – her ledger was dripping, gushing red and she’ll never be able to clear it. The place she was working for have been plotting a plan for 60 years to destroy the world and build another one, a better one, and that would have been fine if they didn’t plan on killing countless people in the process. 

Natasha was fine, she was fine having her job be built upon lies, but only when she knew what the lies were. Now here she was sitting on a stranger’s bed, looking at Steve wearing nothing but a white undershirt and for the first time in forever she had no witty remark, or tough explanation to spew out. 

Her head was pounding, though she would never admit that it wasn’t just because of the explosion. She was a twenty-nine year old girl, who never got a present from Santa, never woke up early to blow out candles on her birthday, and lost most of her baby teeth from beatings, and learning how to fight, that she never believed in the tooth fairy. Her first memory was of fire, then training, then a dance recital that never happened. They, the Red Room, told her that her parent’s abandoned her, but those nights she woke up in a hot sweat with the picture of a women with dark red hair, and a loving face etched into her memory proved otherwise. She learnt how to seduce before she even reached puberty, how to kill a man with her bare hands before she learnt how to read. The first time she ever remembered saying the words “I love you,” when she was only a child got her punished and her friend killed. Since that day she learnt that emotions were a liability that only ended in suffering so she soon forgot how to feel because it was easier that way. Her whole life was one huge cover after another, and now looking into Steve’s eyes she couldn’t help but feel the trauma of that all that start to catch up to her. Deep down she knew that all this pain had always been trapped beneath her rock hard exterior, but now there were cracks – to many cracks to fix in time before she burst, and that’s what scared her the most.

She could feel her heart rate start to increase, and the pounding in her head grew louder. Natasha wanted nothing more than to lock herself in a room and scream at the world, but here she was trapped. She looked at Steve, the man they called Captain America. She remembered first hearing about him being found in the ice. She had only been with SHIELD for a few years, so when she saw him on the helicarrier the day everything went to hell, she couldn’t help but feel a slight connection between him and her. In a way they both didn’t belong where they were, and they were both lost inside, but the only difference was that he once had a home and she never did. He once had a purpose, but she was always just a tool made to be used and conquered. Natasha wished that she could hate him for being given a second chance, for having a squeaky clean ledger, but she couldn’t. In some weird way she felt as though it was her job to give him back the life he missed the seventy years he spent frozen asleep – the life she never got the chance to have because he deserved it more.

It was bad enough she felt that way, but then he had to go and save her life. Before that moment she felt as though no one cared, that if she died, she’d just be another name on a list soon forgotten, but now that someone maybe cared about her life, she felt like she was a little kid again, who just admitted loving someone, and that someone got killed. She didn’t want that to happen again, she wouldn’t let that happen again. She was the goddamn Black Widow – she didn’t feel, she only did. For all these years that she thought she was doing well, she was only doing worse. She traded one cage for another, and now she felt herself suffocating from the inside out. All she ever wanted was to do her job, but now she felt like there was a part of her missing. Natasha never stopped to ask herself what she wanted to do, what she wanted to become because she was never given a choice, and now she felt empty, like she’s been drowning her whole life but only now did she hit the bottom of the ocean and realize that she never had a breath of fresh air.

“If it was up to me to save your life, would you trust me to do it?” she asked Steve, because in all honesty she wasn’t even sure if she trusted herself to do the right thing. 

She wasn’t quite sure what the right thing was anymore.

“I would now,” said Steve and despite her whole life being made up of lies, she felt like he was telling the truth.

“I-I just have no idea what to do. As soon as I joined SHIELD I made sure to always have a way out for when things went to hell – because in my experience they always do, but right now I just feel so lost,” she said not quite sure how to put it in words.

This might have been the first time in forever she told someone about how she felt, not about how a mission went, or what her cover was, but how she was doing, and it felt god to have someone listen back. Clint always listened, but since Loki messing with his head she didn’t want to burden him with any of her problems, and in the mist of all that she felt her importance slowly start to disappear. 

“Sometimes it’s okay to be lost,” said Steve as he paused and took a deep breath. “It reminds us that there are still paths to take, we just have to find the right one, because if you don’t get lost, you may never be found.” 

“How do you do it?” she asked.

“Well even when I had nothing, I had Bucky,” he said looking down. “And now I have you too.”

“Barton was sent to kill me, but he made a different call, so even though it may seem like your friend can’t be saved, just know that it doesn’t mean we have to stop fighting for him,” said Natasha, seeing as though it was her turn to comfort Steve. “And it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a chance.”

She stood to get up when she was interrupted by Steve. 

“Thanks Natasha.”

“That’s what friends are for.”

Natasha still felt lost, and didn’t know quite how the day would end, but she did know one thing for sure. She knew that she had a choice, and now, for the first time in forever she had a friend too.

“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down”  
-Anonymous

**Author's Note:**

> CAP 2 IS SOOOO CLOSE SO I WROTE THIS SO I WOULDNT WATCH ANY SPOILERS. THIS WILL PROBABLY ME MY LAST NOT SO SAD FIC UNTIL CAP 2 CAUSE THEN IM GOING ANGST ALL THE WAY!!!! Sooooo manny feels!!!!
> 
> Thanks for reading and please leave a request for any future fics or prompts to keep me busy these next few days:)


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